


feel like i'm fixin' to die

by angelfeast (miscellanium)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Asexual Character, Come Marking, M/M, Masturbation, No Sex, Pre-Canon, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-27 06:06:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/658766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miscellanium/pseuds/angelfeast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Winchester landed in Da Nang during the time of reduction, seventeen and ready to kill.</p><p>[For Porn Battle XIV prompts <i>soldier, past, longing, escape</i>]</p>
            </blockquote>





	feel like i'm fixin' to die

**Author's Note:**

> contains background consent issues (typical angel dickery). title from the [country joe song](http://www.lyrics007.com/Country%20Joe%20And%20The%20Fish%20Lyrics/I%20Feel%20Like%20I%27m%20Fixin%27%20To%20Die%20Rag%20Lyrics.html).

John Winchester landed in Da Nang during the time of reduction, seventeen and ready to kill. The slow government withdrawal soon caught up with him, sending his battalion back to sunny California after a couple months of patrolling the Vietnamese suburbs. Not bad, all things considered, for a high school dropout from the heartland. He should have died on the thirteenth day.

-

The beaches of Da Nang had fine sand, cold water, and air so damp it didn't matter whether you were swimming or not. Castiel cared about none of this; ou wore a different skin, the Novak uncle who survived yet never left, but the disconnect was the same. Every body was limited.

John sat on a boulder by the shore, near enough to hear the waves but far from their spray. Looking out across the ocean, the unfamiliar horizon that looked just like the one he left behind at Pendleton, he pulled out a sheaf of letters tied together with a ribbon. They'd arrived that morning and he was aching to read his Mary's words, smell her perfume on the papers stained with her fingerprints.

Castiel walked over to him, taking care to leave bootprints in the sand. Ou wouldn't be here long and did not want to be remembered. Ou stood between his dangling legs and looked up at him without shielding the vessel's eyes from the sun. The burning spots were like motes of grace, and so ou let them fade on their own. "Letters from home."

"Ah, yes, sir. High school sweetheart, sir." He saluted with the letters in his hand, the ribbon curling across his forehead in the breeze.

"I see." The seal of union seemed to have found its hold, placed that last day when John saw Mary across the street as he left, but sometimes destiny moved slowly. "Do you love her?"

John grinned. "You bet. Stubborn, but tits out to here."

"How did you meet?"

"I...don't remember exactly, sir," John said, tightening his grip on the letters. Castiel saw the unease on his face—he'd yet to teach himself how to be stone like those GIs on the big screen—and stepped back. Destiny was too powerful for the lower levels, ou had been told; best not to push it too far. Ou's duty lay not in the shaping, but in the watching.

After digging into ou's vessel for human gestures Castiel reached out and touched the rock, felt the hard youth of it. "Close your eyes and tell me of her."

"You miss girls too, sir?" John chuckled and slipped the letters back into his jacket. "Sure, all right."

The angel listened as he talked of long hair, soft skin, warm flesh he had never touched. He talked of what he would like to do when home, how he meant to lift her up and slip a hand under her skirt in front of everybody, mark her as his. To Castiel all humans were meant to be marked or guided, like children, and so ou was not bothered. John and Mary had already been touched by hands stronger than their own, or would be soon—the history of one short life folded so easily into the next.

Their memory, too, was short—John had already forgotten Castiel was there. That or he'd stopped caring, because now he had his rough army pants open, his hands moving on his cock as he spoke. There was still time for him to die, so Castiel stayed and watched John breathe, watched him hunch over himself as his spit-slick strokes gave way to tight short pulls. His free hand, scrabbling for purchase, landed on Castiel's and held it tight against the rock.

Ou didn't move, just waited for him to finish as his stuttered cry was muffled by the ocean, his come spilling out across his hand and down the boulder. Some of it landed on Castiel's borrowed uniform, but the angel paid this no mind. John was opening his eyes now, bleary with the effort of remembering place and self, so Castiel cleaned him off and zipped him up with a blink. The danger had passed, the sacrifice made, so now he could go.

"It's 1400 hours," ou said, nudging his hippocampus with tendrils of grace before he could orient himself, store in his memory what had just happened.

John squinted at ou, then checked his watch. "Fuck!" He jumped down and grabbed his gear, slinging his rifle across his back. "Shit, I was supposed to—"

"They didn't miss you. I have taken care of it."

John saluted before running back to the city, his loping pace at turns ungainly and graceful. Castiel turned to leave, ou's tasks done, then paused. Ou's uniform was still stained, and it would not do to carry such a badge. Ou left the vessel, laid it on the beach breathing, and ascended to Heaven.

-

One night, after Famine, after Cupid, Dean hands Castiel a beer. "Did you ever meet my dad? And I don't mean like you showed me, I mean for real." The words are casual enough but in the pauses there is a threat.

Castiel looks at him, sees the dirt beneath the skin, the history of his lives. "He was a lonely man."


End file.
